Red Ants
by JYLG
Summary: Naruto celebrates in a cell. A side story after the events of 'One More Time'.


Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine.

BEARING GIFTS

Side story after the events of One More Time.

_There are many reasons to celebrate, and twice more to mourn. _

There is a basement beneath the administration building that next to no one in the Hidden Leaf knows about, and Nara Shikamaru is reluctantly one of the few who do. He's also unhappily one of an even smaller minority who can pass unharmed through the web of jutsus that ward the place. But no matter how many times he comes, it still crawls over his skin and picks at his nerves the way unfamiliarly powerful spells do.

Uncharacteristically he says nothing about the discomfort, only grunting slightly as he rises to his feet and paces out the chill in his limbs. But Naruto's apologetic grin knows anyway, and Shikamaru in turn simply shrugs it off; Naruto doesn't feel the cold. _Like a bad case of red ants_ he'd said when Shikamaru asked him once. _Biting through everything under here_ he tapped his abdomen and grimaced. _Dunno how Shino stands the little buggers_.

_They don't try to kill him_ Shikamaru replied, and Naruto merely grinned. He has never asked again after that.

But he doesn't have to. He's seen it himself, when Naruto curls over with his forehead to the floor or the wall or against the bars, shaking arms pressed so hard against his stomach that his chuckles are spurts of choked breath when Shikamaru tells him about Kiba's rambunctious puppies in the linen store or another disgruntled jounin wanting to quit Neji's squad. He stops when the laughter becomes deeper and thicker, and Shikamaru muses that there's little difference between Naruto's coughing and the growls of a very angry demon fox. And he knows which it is, when Naruto's slitted eyes gleam and he bares fangs in concentration as his claws try to dig out the ants. There is more than just the seal on his stomach now.

Shikamaru quickly finds pacing tiresome, and stops to lean against one wall, arms folded across his chest. Today is a good day – Naruto does nothing more than fidget, but it's not long before he finally explodes with a sigh of impatience. "Come on, what else?"

Shikamaru rolls his eyes, exasperated and grateful for the twelve-year-old that survived. "Shut up, I'm trying to think."

Naruto snorts. "Oh yeah, forgot who I was talking to." And because he knows he has to be content with Shikamaru merely raising one eyebrow, Naruto sticks his tongue out at him, and grimaces with the effort.

"Grow up you retard, you're twenty-nine, not two." Naruto stops sulking immediately just as he finishes wrapping one ankle, and straightens with a stupid smile. "Yes I am, so what else?"

Shikamaru tilts his head away so that he is looking down the single, wide corridor. The uneven cement floor is cracked in places and rusty metal pipes snake up the weathered walls and along the breadth of the ceiling. The basement is old enough for the Fifth to remember hunting for a 13-year-old pervert and his spyglass amidst the stacks of old documents and weaponry once housed here, before the place was abandoned to the damp and the dark and forgotten.

_Huh, so the place's been empty for what, ninety years?_ The thing about Naruto, he could take all these nasty hits to the head, survive and make the same mistake all over again. It took either sheer talent or sheer idiocy, and for Naruto it didn't matter which. He had bitched about evil old hags for the rest of the day.

But the blonde had taken a strange shine to the basement that first time they'd gingerly felt their way down the steps by the light of their torches. Shikamaru made it his business to _like_ shadows, but he didn't like them that quiet and still and too close to that final shadow that would take them all sooner or later. Some things don't change, and muttering misgivings to himself has always been a bad habit of his. But some things do, and Shikamaru perpetually forgets about Naruto's unnatural hearing.

The idiot almost toppled him over the edge when he abruptly surged ahead of them to take the rest of the stairs in one long, nimble bound. His eyes and teeth had glinted in the light when he lifted his head up to their startled unease, and Shikamaru knew who Naruto was talking to when the blonde cracked a weird, knowing laugh. "Just like home. Don't worry, we're gonna make sure it gets lively around here soon enough."

Naruto's senses are not the only things that changed – he doesn't do it all the time, but Shikamaru can't remember when the blonde became comfortable speaking in plural first.

"Don't be an ass, how much longer are you gonna take?!"

"What, the sake not good enough?"

Naruto huffs. "That pervert gives me the same thing every year. And those _stupid_ books." He gestures dismissively at a small haphazard pile in one corner of the room, and pulls a face when Shikamaru blandly points out, "You could've left them in your apartment."

"Konohamaru is _not_ going to find that kind of trash at my place!" Naruto sniffs. "Brat doesn't know when to give up; he's getting better too. Found my emergency stash the last time and replaced them with vegetarian."

"And so your legacy endures," Shikamaru says drily, and Naruto's scowl gives way to an unabashedly proud grin. "Damn right! Only just so much that stupid old hag lets me get away with nowadays. Konohamaru learns faster than… than any kid she's ever saddled me with."

Naruto's face grows a little darker when he falters, but Shikamaru only muses, "That 'kid' is already twenty-two. If he learnt just as well from his real teacher, he should have made jounin last year." Naruto grins again, but vaguely, distractedly, and Shikamaru sighs, resigning himself to wait. But when all Naruto does is pick at the bandage around his arm, he says with some impatience, "Stop thinking so hard, the kid's fine." And he knows Naruto knows that he's not talking about Konohamaru.

Naruto pauses, then shifts to glare at him. "I know that. Sasuke's a bastard, but he won't do anything to Sakura's kid." He growls a little. "That's not what pisses me off."

Shikamaru rolls his eyes. "Gods, the two of you. All it ever comes down to is a pissing match."

"We could have beaten him." Naruto says it evenly, and Shikamaru doesn't doubt the grim seriousness in the blonde's voice. "He's gotten stronger, but we could've beaten him. And I didn't."

And he had almost died. Because even though he had used the fox's chakra so many times before, he had never broken that final lock. And against Sasuke in that final moment, he had stood before that lock with the key, on the brink of a power that would sweep them up and crush them together for the last time.

Shikamaru had never asked, but he knew that within that maelstrom of emotion and chakra, in that crucial decision between mastery and release, Naruto had made the worst kind of mistake. Because the person he was fighting was _Sasuke_, and he had faltered. The key twisted and the lock broke beyond complete repair, and the fox jammed eager, hungry claws in the gap between, snarling and writhing and drawing it wider to freedom and death of the seal.

Two years was two more than what they had expected of Naruto. He would have let his rage and despair consume him, let the fox rise and take him over in his hunt for the Betrayer and his charge. But the Fifth was not the best Medic-nin for nothing. And the other remaining member of the Legendary Trio too began to wander less and less from the Hidden Mist, until he deigned to try the local ramen and was content to simply write his books behind the local bathhouses.

So when his family refused to give him up, Naruto started doing the same.

"The Fifth's dropping by later." It's a blunt change of subject, but Shikamaru doesn't care.

Naruto groans. "Nooo, did you tell her I was down here?!"

Shikamaru shrugs. "She's got more stuff with her," and Naruto perks up in another quicksilver mood change. "She damn well should, with all the shit she likes putting me through every other day." He eyes Shikamaru inquisitively. "So what're they?"

"Didn't ask." When Naruto scowls at him again, Shikamaru sighs irritably. "Don't be annoying, you can wait." A brief pause, then, "Or you could go see her yourself."

He says it lightly, but doesn't turn away when the blonde stares at him thoughtfully. Finally Naruto just shrugs, and his grin is rueful but grim. "Nah, not taking any chances. Last night wasn't very pretty." The tick in the Fifth's forehead had told Shikamaru as much earlier, and the shadows under and in her eyes said the same thing but in a more subdued shade.

"He's getting sneakier," Naruto says conversationally. "Thinks he can pull one over me when I'm knocked out – heh." Naruto's huff of derision says everything about his instincts and nerves and insomnia that he doesn't put into words. He taps the bars, ringing the metal and the ward on it. "Stupid meeting ran so late, and the old hag said she wanted to talk to me after she was done, so I thought, why not, she owes me dinner for it. No one else knows about this place anyway, and it was good enough for a nap."

Which saved the rest of us. Luck or irony, it didn't matter which. The Fifth had warned Shikamaru to look out for it; no one doubted Naruto's strength, but the episodes were becoming more frequent and more agitated. Naruto had proven himself superior in his control and chakra manipulation. It was inevitable that the fox would try something different. And it was a very good or stupid thing that it tried behind bars in the basement under the administration building. And it was a lot more than just red ants.

Naruto sighs, picking up his uniform vest and eyeing it woefully. "I hope she brings a new one with her," he says, lifting it higher to peer at Shikamaru through the rips. "And I think I'm gonna need more bandages. Stupid bastard's not letting me heal," he grumbles.

Shikamaru shifts his weight against the wall. "I could get more now." Naruto narrows his eyes before they widen with sudden recollection. "Oh no, you're not off the hook yet. You haven't gotten me anything, have you?"

Shikamaru tells himself that he doesn't feel guilty – even in the paltriest amounts, it's a troublesome emotion ninjas can't afford to have. "I only just came back this morning, you dimwit," and Naruto snickers. "You left your report 'til last again!" He cracks a wider grin when Shikamaru frowns at him and says, almost defensively, "Final briefing took longer than I expected, and some of them had to see the medics before that." Which meant more tiresome paperwork for the team leader.

"You're hopeless," Naruto snorts amusedly.

"I'm hungry," Shikamaru corrects him. "And I'm tired." And when the Fifth had waylaid him after the briefing, he had put off everything to come down here and see what the hell the fox had been up to.

"So am I," Naruto replies lightly. Shikamaru looks away from his friend, sitting serenely amidst shredded fabric and bloody bandages, and mutters under his breath, knowing that Naruto will hear him anyway.

"Happy birthday."

"Heh, thanks."

END


End file.
